Throughout this application, various publications are referenced. Full citations for these publications may be found immediately preceding the claims. The disclosures of these publications are hereby incorporated by reference into this application in order to more fully describe the state of the art as of the date of the invention described and claimed herein.
Currently, many practitioners believe that the best approach to repair of many life-threatening cardiac disorders is a cardiac transplant. Alternative approaches being tested currently are skeletal muscle myoblasts or non-transformed human mesenchymal stem cells. However, skeletal myoblasts do not become part of the cardiac synctium and few undifferentiated human mesenchymal stem cells ever become myocytes. Given the limitations in supply of hearts for transplants and the limitations in cell repair methods to date, there is a need for a more effective and generally applicable approach to cardiac repair.